Transformation and Transcendence: The Power of Female Friendship

In 1997 I arrived in Geneva to work for a year at the headquarters of a relief organization. Feeling overwhelmed by my job and lonely in a city of overworked expats passing through for two to three year stints at the United Nations or other organizations with the rather nebulous goal of “changing the world,” I made friends with a group of women. I was 22, and all three women — one American, one German, and one Argentinian – were 30 years older than I and had worked for the same organization in various administrative capacities for the length of time I’d been alive. After one lengthy, boozy dinner of fondue and buckets of white wine, they quickly took me into their friendship fold and jokingly referred to themselves as “the Wrinklies.” We met once a week for dinner, and saw one another every day at the espresso machine in the hallway, in the fabulously lush cantina, on the expertly-tended grounds of our superluxe office building outside the city limits. We had inside jokes and secret looks. We gave each other little gifts: a cookie, a note, a bar of chocolate, a little token of affection spotted at a shop and slipped underneath an office door.

All three women (and myself as well) were unmarried, living alone, and working to assist people in real need in countries around the world. Despite the fact that I immediately felt accepted, supported, challenged and nurtured by each of them, when I first joined their weekly dinner group, I felt sorry for them. They weren’t married, they weren’t mothers – and at this time, and up until very recently, I clung to the belief that this constituted some failure on their part. They found me equally mystifying. Was I really worried about the size of my ass or trying to finagle a recent date with a man they thought (from my description) was boring and slightly odious? (He was.) Was it a good use of my time, they wondered, to hang out in bars getting smashed and looking to score and by doing this (they were rightfully doubtful) find “the love of my life” when I said I wanted to be a writer? Sure, sure, I said, but I dismissed their concerns, and mourned what I interpreted as their missed opportunities to have a real life, which I assumed would only start for me when I was married and a mother. I loved them, but in my mind I was remembering that old phrase I’d heard for most of my life, in hushed and shameful tones: old maid. I was also keen to make my life look “normal” and “acceptable” in some way because I have a disability; if I didn’t get the body part right, I reasoned (irrationally, although it seemed quite rational at the time), I could get the “what your life looks like” part right. While I was obsessing about how I looked and who would love me, these women were helping to save the world – not in a way that would win them accolades, certainly – but the work they were doing was important and life-giving. And there I sat, foolishly pitying them.

One afternoon at work while I was chain-smoking through my open window into a cloudy sky, there was a flurry of activity in the hallway. A few harried shouts. Running feet. The quick shuffling of paper. Someone working in one of the countries was attempting to obtain medicine for a child who was sick with what appeared to be a form of strep (I’ve forgotten in which country or if it was indeed strep). The child’s mother, calling to ask for help from what was apparently a decrepit payphone, was trying to get the antibiotic medication from a corrupt doctor who demanded a bribe, an insane amount of money that this woman would never make or likely ever see in her lifetime. My three friends were literally running up and down the hallway, in and out of their offices on my floor, faxing and calling, shouting into the phone, trying to find another person to shout with more authority into the phone to try and help this desperate mother, this helpless child. The medicine was right there. For hours they labored, trying to find a way to make it right in a place where mail was sent in bags labeled only with numbers, and where children died frequently from diarrhea and the flu and the various effects of hideous wars and wrenching poverty. I think we’re going to get it, I think it’s going to be okay, one of my friends said through my open doorway as she sprinted off to the fax machine. But it was not okay. It was too late, perhaps it was always too late. The baby died.

I heard the news and wandered to the office where my three friends sat, shedding silent tears and drinking, one by one, from a bottle of whiskey that had appeared from beneath someone’s desk – perhaps for occasions like this. I drank with them, silently, as the rain pounded the darkened windows. What I realized, sitting there, was that these women had been in these kinds of emotionally challenging situations for over 20 years. Together. They understood, together, as friends, and apart, as individuals in the world, the urgency of compassion, and that it often goes unnoticed but that this doesn’t make it any less important or vital or difficult to sustain and cultivate. And they also understood that you could try as hard as you possibly could, and disaster could still strike – mercilessly. Without warning, without fairness, and with fatal consequences. I wasn’t ready to change my man-chasing, embarrassing ways, but a seed was planted on that afternoon. Nearly fifteen years later I get out of bed each morning and am thankful that I wasn’t so myopically committed to old, tried myths about women’s roles that I couldn’t see what was happening in that room between those three women, or what was happening in my own mind.

The Wrinklies weren’t spinsters or old maids and they were not “failures” in any way. They were free. It was I who failed to see them, until later, for who they really were: educated, hugely intelligent, fascinating, financially independent. Women who led rich lives full of meaningful work, deep and lasting friendship, sex when they wanted it, time with the beloved children of their family and friends, conversations about politics and art and literature, culture, travel to remarkable destinations where they did not journey as unconscious tourists but as guests in people’s homes and hearts. Despite these full lives they owned their own time, they owned their days. I did not. I was too busy trying to find someone who would spend the days with me, as if this would validate my presence in the world.

Oh, but the times have changed; the world has changed. Has it? Is the old-fashioned story I was living in my early 20s so far-fetched in our “enlightened” world? Recently I overheard a man say at a yoga class, “Yeah, well, you get two women together and it’s like bitch central.” I could have told him he only needed one, in fact, and that would be me, but it also made me realize how much people diminish and poo-poo the real power and strength of female friendship, especially between women, which is either supposed to descend into some kind of male lesbian love scene porn fantasy or be dismissed as meaningless or be re-written as a story of competition. Here’s the truth: friendships between women are often the deepest and most profound love stories, but they are often discussed as if they are ancillary, “bonus” relationships to the truly important ones. Women’s friendships outlast jobs, parents, husbands, boyfriends, lovers, and sometimes children.

A year ago, when my then nine-month-old son Ronan was diagnosed with Tay-Sachs disease, an always-fatal illness that would land him in a vegetative state before his likely death before the age of three, the first person I called was a friend (my mom). She immediately got in the car with my dad and started driving to my home in Santa Fe. After Ronan was napping, oblivious to his fate, I talked with my girlfriends for hours. “Talked” is a generous term: I wailed, shrieked, cried, sobbed, screamed, cursed, threatened, lamented and pounded my head against the wall. I pulled at my skin and my hair. I talked jibberish and shouted the word “blackness” over and over again. I was truly freaking out, truly inconsolable, in a Job-like state of hell that is still very present in my daily, waking life. But on Ronan’s diagnosis day I also thought of that afternoon in Geneva. I was that desperate mother now; it was my baby who was going to die, and soon. It was already too late. I literally could not bear it. I asked for help and I got it. My friends stood with me in the middle of the scary, sky-howling road I was on, knowing they couldn’t take away the pain of the experience, but promising to be there when I emerged on the other side of the grief tunnel when my child would be gone. I feel them, every day, standing there as I stumble through the blissful, heart-breaking hours with my son whose brain and body fail him a little bit more each day. It is not an exaggeration to say that I would not have survived – that I will not survive — without my women friends.

I was reminded of the Wrinklies, of my friends, of the ways in which they carry me, when I read A Train in Winter by Caroline Morehead, a remarkable book that tells the story of women French resistance fighters who were sent to Auschwitz and who survived by doing what women do: supporting, finding a way to love and nurture in situations marked by the absence of love, tenderness, sense, sanity, or even humanity. In a concentration camp they managed to make Christmas gifts out of string and sticks; they put on plays in their barracks; they supported the weaker women, often hiding them for roll call. They were “a team.”

Not a gaggle of bitches then, but women who survived against literally unthinkable odds, in a place where all the rules about how to be a human were disregarded, turned on their heads. When it was all over, the few that had lived returned home, but the connections they had with others weren’t as fierce, weren’t as strong. The ache of missing was intense: “Even when they were not able to meet, the survivors continued to feel bound to each other in ways that did not weaken with time. There remained a familiarity between them, a sense of openness and ease that they shared with no one else.” The book brought to mind movies that celebrate female friendship: Beaches, when a woman sits with her friend until she dies; Iris, when the novelist Iris Murdoch has been transformed by Alzheimer’s, her friends love her through it; Julia, when a distraught Jane Fonda tries to locate the child of her friend who was murdered during WW2. She wants to care for the child but she also wants part of the woman she loved. These are often called “chick flicks,” as if they had no truth or wisdom to offer to anyone but the silly, fickle women who shell out money to see them or rent them on Netflix.

The last time I saw the Wrinklies was in 1999 on a return trip to Geneva. The youngest of the three had had a stroke as a result of a brain tumor. These friends she’d worked and traveled and lived and laughed and loved with for over half her life rented a new ground-floor apartment that would accommodate a wheelchair, took shifts taking care of her, all the while holding down jobs that were about saving other people’s friends, other people’s kids, other people’s lives – not directly, no, but on the sidelines, behind the scenes, booking travel and setting up conference space and directing supplies and networking with people on the ground who were face to face with whatever crisis situation needed to be handled. I was nervous as I sat waiting in a pub to see them all again, afraid of seeing my paralyzed friend. Would my face show a reaction that I didn’t intend? Fear? Disgust? The three of them came in together, smiling. The unaffected two had learned to understand the other’s few words; they wiped her face, helped her eat and made her laugh. This was a snapshot of what my own deep friendships could lead to: transformation. I saw, on that afternoon, that it’s possible to transcend the limits of your skin in a friendship. That a friend can take you out of the boxes you’ve made for yourself and burn them up. This kind of friendship is not a frivolous connection, a supplementary relationship to the ones we’re taught and told are primary – spouses, children, parents. It is love. When the youngest Wrinklie died, I remember getting the news in my apartment in Berkeley, married, already knowing it wouldn’t last, and thinking she was lucky. And she was.

And so am I. Hugely so. While my child goes blind and has seizures and struggles to swallow and eat and disappears before my eyes into an early grave my friends have done the following: traveled across states and continents to visit me, called or emailed or been in touch every day, cried with me into chardonnay and tequila and tamales, written me weekly letters, taken me dancing, gotten me horribly drunk, fed me, hugged me, held me, conducted research, built blogs, baked, cooked, knitted, cried, shouted, organized fund raisers for Ronan’s expenses, offered their house for visitors, driven me to appointments, advocated for me, given money to me, reminded me that I was loved, responded to a bullet-pointed email with a bullet-pointed response, said “I wish I could save your baby,” and “I’ll do anything that helps. Anything at all,” agreed to go to a desert island with me after Ronan dies and drink Mai Tais and scream at the stars and cry into the sand and go to tourist nightclubs and act like teenagers. Every time (and this happens so many, many times every day) when I think there’s no way I can survive this, that Ronan’s death will kill everything good and hopeful in me, I’ll get a letter or a text or an email or a feeling and it will buoy me in a way that enables me to take another step forward, to be with my son, to help him die, which is my task.

Support, salvation, transformation, life: this is what women give to one another when they are true friends, soul friends, what the Irish call anam cara. It’s what the Wrinklies did for one another, what the French resistance fighters in Auschwitz did for one another, what women do for one another in real relationships with real consequences in real time, every day, what my friends do for me. We help one another other live and sometimes, we watch – and help – one another die. It happens in movies, sure, but it also happens every day, in real life – now, tomorrow, yesterday. It is transformative and transcendent. It is real. It is love.

A former Fulbright scholar and graduate of Harvard University, Emily Rapp is the author of the books The Still Turning Point of the World and Poster Child: A Memoir, in addition to many essays and stories in The New York Times, The Los Angeles Times, The Bark, Bellevue Literary Review, The Sun, Body + Soul, StoryQuarterly, Good Housekeeping, The Texas Observer, and other publications. She is the recipient of a Rona Jaffe Writers' Award, a James A. Michener Fellowship at the University of Texas-Austin (Michener Center for Writers), and the Philip Roth Writer-in-Residence fellowship at Bucknell University. She has received awards and grants for her work from the Fine Arts Work Center, the Jentel Arts Foundation, the Corporation of Yaddo, and the Fundacion Valparaiso. She has taught writing in the MFA program at Antioch University-Los Angeles, where she was a core faculty member, the Gotham Writers' Workshop, and UCLA-Extension. She is currently professor of creative writing and literature at the Santa Fe University of Art and Design. She is at work on a novel.
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130 Responses to “Transformation and Transcendence: The Power of Female Friendship”

Emily, your writing is always so powerful, so brimming over with joy and rage, that it always brings me to tears. But thanks the universe for the friendships between you and people like you also so full of joy and rage that enable all of us to have hope in the darkest times that we can survive, together.

I really needed to read this essay today. I love it. I’ll never forget how when my brother died it was my girlfriends that were there with me. We went to Sephora to get special make-up mascara that couldn’t run that could weather anything we demanded. The sales girl thought we were going on a whitewater rafting trip. It made me laugh for once. For once in days. And then we spun a lovely tale of a white water rafting trip. It was women that fed me things, protein or potassium or peanut butter or Coca Cola or wine or cigarettes or Kleenex or poetry or alone time. They confronted grief in a way that all the guys were timid about. It was just like being a teenager. Unsure of my body. and then outside by the pool a sea of girls naked sunbathing not giving a shit. The guys shirking around the edges afraid to say hi afraid to notice.

This was beautiful and so touching. What a wonderful tribute to female friendship. I know I can’t truly imagine what it must be like to be in your situation, but you describe your feelings with such detail, color, and honesty, that I almost feel like I can imagine it.
Thank you for sharing.

My very best friend and I often joke about being mistaken for lesbians. This is the same best friend who once paid for an entire painful dental procedure because I couldn’t afford it, with less than ten minutes’ warning, and said to me that she would willingly give up a position in the DIA if it meant she had to leave me behind. There are few things more powerful than friendship, and the kind between women is often transformed by observers into something it is not. Thank you for sharing this.

Thanks, everyone, for your comments, and for reading. In some ways, it was one of the easiest essays to write; in other ways the hardest, as I could have written 50,000 more pages about each person and everything they’ve done and are. Friends rule. It’s difficult to put it into words, really.

This is just glorious. It was such a pleasure to read something so moving and eloquent about the bonds women can share. All too often the rhetoric is that women can’t be friends. Nothing could be further from the truth. I loved this.

No greater truth has ever been written. Just this Friday I had to call upon my closest girlfriends due to the fact that my daughter had a cutting relapse that was severe enough to put her in the emergency room and admitted to an inpatient mental healthcare facility. They not only rallied around me but the love, compassion, and care they showered on my daughter and older sister who had found her was the purest love I have ever seen. I have emailed this essay to all of them as a show of appreciation for the miracle that is their friendship.

Amazing and a wonderful piece of literature. I am so sad for you and for Rowan, but also so hopeful that you will help the rest of us figure it all out in the end, You are a marvel, the gods wait to delight in you. All my love, Nora from Cleveland Ohio.

Beautiful Emily! Your writing is so engaging and so very true. Many underestimate the power of women. As a army wife I have first hand experience with the strength and support woman give eachother. We grieve, celebrate, criticize, and rejoice together. I feel such a debt to my female friends, and hopefully by sending them this I can express through your words how very important they are to me. I am so glad you are surrounded by such good and string women as well! You are often in my thoughts as I keep up with your blog, there are no words just positive energy! Keira

Thank you for the gift of your lovely writing about the power of female friendships. This essay has me in tears of joy, regret, love and a renewed passion for my friends. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.

Oh, Emily, your words have such power and touch so many. When you hug your little Roman tonight, please know that my prayers are with you. My God, I wish I could save your baby boy. Fight on, sweet girl.

I lost a baby halfway through my pregnancy at the beginning of last month. I have been searching for a way to thank my girlfriends who got me through it–who still get me through it in my bad moments, on my bad days–and let them know how much they mean to me. Your words spoke volumes to me. Thank you. I am so very sorry for your pain and wish you, Ronan and your family and friends peace.

I can agree with every sentiment. I’ve found truly amazing women that will forever be a part of my life and have helped me through the worst I’ve faced yet–and when more comes down the pike (It always does) I know I can count on them and they count on me.

The fact that you let them be your strength when you need it shows just how strong you are.

Thank you for sharing this with us. As I read your piece, I remembered all the beautiful female souls that have made me life rich and make it worth living every day. After the death of a family member, my eyes had become permanently swollen after daily crying for 6 months. One girlfriend came over with Preparation H and the determination to get the stuff on my raw eyelids to bring down the swelling. She gave me the first genuine laugh I had in months. I thank her, I thank you, all the women that have come before and those who will come afterward.

What a beautiful article. I can help but think that the female friendships you describe are akin to finding your soulmate. Alas, I have not been lucky in finding these kinds of friendships with women. I searched, I tried, I failed. I often look at the landscape of my life and yearn for that type of friendship; as much for myself to give. I wish there as a match.com for female friends.

Dear Emily,
Thanks for sharing this beautiful and heart-wrenching story with us and the world. This is so so true. A friend said last year or earlier that you are, in some ways, in love with your close friends i.e. they represent the very best things you want in a person. Thanks for this. It made me cry but it also lifted me up a on day when I really needed it and you helped me to realize that I am slipping. That is, creating boxes again for myself by trying to fit into a mold – being married, having children and having a career. I still want the first two but perhaps I don’t need to beat myself up so often because I don’t have them yet :-). As you rightly say, these will NOT make me, me. Life itself and how I deal with it, will do that rightly enough. What courage you have! A warm hug from a stranger in another part of the world. Wishing you peace and much love……

Lovely, Emily, and thank you. I just sent this to my two: best friends since we were 15, now approaching Wrinkly territory ourselves, each with a wide arc of life behind her but still all very much in accord with each other, by virtue of some bond that runs so deep under the surface I couldn’t pinpoint it if I wanted to. Whenever I’m short of a blessing to count, they represent the one on the list that never ever wavers. I know I’m deeply fortunate to have that, whatever else life hands me. I’m glad you are too.

I am moved to tears by this wonderful piece. How I wish I knew the author personally, because I, too, would do everything I could to be there for her. Of all the friendships I’ve had in my life (I am of an age to be a member of the wrinklies) those friendships that have endured the longest, and meant the most were always friendships with other women. Bless you for writing this beautiful, heartfelt piece, and bless you people at Rumpus for publishing it.

This talks so powerfully from first-hand experience. It makes me cry, but is also reaffirming of the power of good girl friendships, and this is what I have recently found for myself. Only woman can truly know the pain of other woman, as maybe only men can only no the pain of other men, but most certainly woman as friends make a powerful collective that can bring much love, peace and understanding. This isn’t lesbianism- it is better without sex, because only then is it a truly boundried, unconditional relationship-full of respect and support. All I can say is I agree and understand, and I hate the mis-guided nonsense that is written about these networks of eternal support and life-giving.

Thank you. You write so beautifully and powerfully and speak to the most underrated gift. Each time I’ve met a new transformative female friend, I have grown and changed because being near them gave me the courage to do so.

A friend tweeted this article, and I read it and was very moved. I think many women know this deep wound in understanding woman’s friendships… I think that Women are arising in Heart these days…Our gift of knowledge, nurturing, wisdom, truth, beauty, nobility and dignity is finally returning to our souls again, after a long, long time of disenchantment. Our voices are truly going to have a place in this wonderful society that we imagine everyday..and our voices are so needed and welcomed now, with each other, for men and for the world. This is the first time in history, where we have freedoms like never before, may we use them wisely and lovingly. I have found in my own life, the writer Clarissa Pinkola Estes, has profoundly effected my life, and her recent audio series called “The Dangerous Old Woman” is finally linking the older womans wisdom with the young. They say we are alive right now with more woman over the age of 90 than ever, in the history of the world…Wow, now thats wisdom worth learning!!! I send you many blessing and warm thoughts.. Slaínte

What a beautiful piece of writing and I hope the wonderful comments make you smile.
Friendship is one of life’s greatest gifts and I for one know that my best friend IS the love of my life and we shall be at each others side for the rest of our lives.
Female friendship makes the happy times incredible memories and the saddest times ones in which we can seek comfort in the arms of someone who knows us the best,where the silence is like the softest blanket that soothes and comforts.
Thank you for sharing your story.

This was an amazing piece. It affected me deeply. Thank you. As the parent of two boys, one of whom has serious medical problems, I also want to say that my heart goes out to you and that I understand, in some small way, the horrible heartache you must feel.

Thank you, thank you. My best, life-long, friend was a woman over 30 years older than I. She has been gone for many years now(I am 62), but not a week goes by without my feeling gratitude for her friendship and all she taught me. It has always been the women in my life who truly showed up for me–not a husband, not a boyfriend–when I did not think I could go on, KNEW that I could not. Even knowing this, I still find myself feeling that what I really need is a guy in my life. Some cultural beliefs run very deep.

Thank you for this wonderful piece. I lost my very best, dearest, oldest friend quite suddenly last July. I still feel her absence in so many ways. Yet, wondrously, I still feel her presence, as well. I will never have another friend like her (can’t replace someone who has been your friend for 45 years), but I DO have so many other WONDERFUL women in my life, who helped me survive the loss of this one friend and who have helped me in so many other ways, as well. I am blessed by their friendship, love and support, and can only hope to be there for them when they need it, as they have been for me.

Wow, what an incredible piece! I thought I was the only jerk who felt sorry for older “spinster” women when I was in my 20’s! One of the few times in life when it turns out wonderfully to be wrong about something. You articulated the transformation of that point of view so beautifully – Thank you!

I have seen this friendship. My two sisters. Sisters, sure, but friends. As were our mother and her sister. Chalk, cheese – and gifted with a friendship that ran soul deep. We are Irish, so I know the sense of anam cara.

I have seen it in my friend Caroline, and the friendships she has with other women. Bonds strong enough to hold a world together. The same Caroline gifted me with her friendship and, affectionately and lovingly, calls me “not a real man”. And I am honored in that.

I wish you, not well, not with what you’re facing. But I wish you the strength you draw from your friendships, from your friends, from those women who care with and for you in all the real ways you write about.

As a woman who has recently re-learned the value of female friendships, I thank you for this piece; somehow seeing this in print validates the feelings I have for my friends. And as a mother of young children, I pray for you and your son. May God bless you and the time you have together. You are a beautiful writer…thank you for sharing your gift with us.

This moved me so much. I read at work (mistake) and cried my eyes out and then sent to all the ladies in my office, and to my dearest friends. What an amazing, beautiful, touching essay. I’m so sad for what you have to go through, and so glad you have such wonderful people to support you.

“I saw, on that afternoon, that it’s possible to transcend the limits of your skin in a friendship. That a friend can take you out of the boxes you’ve made for yourself and burn them up. This kind of friendship is not a frivolous connection, a supplementary relationship to the ones we’re taught and told are primary – spouses, children, parents. It is love.”
Thank you so much for this piece. I am writing to all of my “Wrinklies” today to tell them I love them.

Thank you for saying so beautifully what cannot be said enough: That no matter how society at large tries to diminish or look past them, for many of us, it is our deep and irreplaceable friendships with the women who never waver — who always rise to the challenge of helping us walk through anything life throws us, whether it’s marriage, divorce, death; joy, sorrow, depression or grief — that save, enrich, complete our lives.

Thank you so much for sharing Emily! I cried and sent it to my best friend. I reminded her that I would wipe her face, help her eat and make her laugh, and then she cried. My father unexpectedly passed away a few months ago and I was a mess. The night before his funeral, she was there -with a bag of Mexican and a 26oz bottle of vodka. I couldn’t have anyone else near me, (family or boyfriend) but her. Sending a full heart and positive thoughts to you and yours!

The way female friendship is treated by Hollywood/pop-culture is one of my deepest pet peeves. How do they get it so wrong? Who are these jealous, catty women who aren’t happy for each others successes and seem to revel in each others failures? That stuff just doesn’t show up in my good friendships with women…

Thank you for sharing your experience… for shedding light onto all of our experiences…

I’m so, so sorry about your son. I am glad you have these friendships and I think you hold up a great model for us to emulate. But I am so, so sorry to read this about your son. I didn’t quite realize what Tay-Sachs is. I didn’t know this kind of experience could happen to someone here, today, now, in this way. I hope your strong friendships,and even the support of those you don’t know, continue to help you continue.

The tears are still flowing. Thank you for sharing this touching experiece.There’s another aspect to our women friends. You dont have to be in touch day in and day out. You may not meet for months. But you know they are always there, just waiting for you to say the word, willing to drop everything and be by your side. Its eternal love.

Wow! What a heartwarming story! Takes me back to my early 30’s when I joined a dream group of mostly women at least 20 years my seniors. They mentored me and midwifed me through so many chapters of my life and I am eternally indebted to them! I shall always love and cherish them. Thank you so much for helping me to remember them.

This is beautiful Emily. I love how you’ve captured the love between girlfriends. And I’m so sorry for your son’s diagnosis, and that you move forward knowing that your purpose is to help him die peacefully and with love.

Over a year ago, I wrote a post about Girlfriends as my friend Amy (with four young children) struggled with Stage IV breast cancer. She has since died, but the girlfriends still get together and still continue the charitable work started with “Amy’s Army.” http://www.aileenreilly.com/blog/2010/12/02/girlfriends/

wow, what an incredible piece ! Well done Emily to share these feelings with such honesty and love – you are an inspiration, my love.
as a wrinklie myself and a single woman, i have always valued so highly the amazing friendships i have with other women from my bestie of fifty one years, who knows me like no other person, to all the beautiful women of all ages that i hold in my heart, some i have known for many years some only connecting with for short chunks of time.
this past two weeks i have had to call on these dear friends as i contracted pneumonia and have been very poorly and alone after being in hospital and then looked after by my wonderful son until he had to go back to work.
And they were there in whatever way they could be and i know whatever happens in our lives, we will do that for each other whatever happens. Like you say, a special kind of love xxx

When my baby girl (a twin) died at 2 days old I did not even anticipate how much I would need the people who were around standing solidly like walls and cushions to break any falls of mine. I feel so many relationships I have kept and let go we’re defined by that time. Perhaps these thing happen to people to give them this insane clarity or hope in te goodness of people. It will be a hard time ahead I ray for strength for you but know that you will emerge on the other side stronger more invested in the lights of the world rather than the darks and an essentially better person. Much love to Ronan for the journey ahead and strength to you.

Lovely and strong and genuine. Thank you for sharing this. I think one of the more difficult things as a adult woman, at least for me, is making new female friends. I am thrilled — thrilled! — when I make a new female friend. It’s the best kind of sustenance and I am happy that you have friends surrounding you.

I have a female friend and I felt every word you said, relation with a friend is intertwined with true love … although they are hard to find, and if you do find one, you are the luckiest person on this planet. This article was fabulous , Thank you.

It would be just as easy to write the exact opposite, a story in which women are not there for one another, do not find “anam cara,” or do not do what people think women do: nurture. I don’t begrudge the author at all and know she is right to feel so fortunate. But it could just have easily gone the other way. It goes the other way every single day. There are no angels, there are no feminine energies, and to believe in such nonsense actually diminishes the value of the author’s real, lived experience.

People always used to joke that my best friend and I were dating, and we’d say, No, if we were dating we would have broken up by now. Friendship is a different kind of relationship, a different struggle — one that, I think, stays open for longer, and allows for deeper forgiveness and acceptance. I am so so sorry about your son, but so glad you have this kind of love in your life. Thank you for this stunning essay. (Now I have to go teach class all swollen-eyed and emotional — A’s! A’s for all the ladies!)

Thank you!! Last week I had a follow-up appointment with my congenital heart disease son of 22 years. Following an extremely problematic surgery at birth, he has maintained a close to normal life style (minus his pervasive developmental disabilities). Now, we are worried about a weakening in his aorta which mostly likely will mean ANOTHER surgery down the road. Following the doctor’s visit, I twisted myself into a knot and fell into a hole of pain and self-pity. Then my friend called, I cried, she listened and then we laughed.

My other friend just e-mailed me this and it was SO needed. As a fifty something divorced woman of intelligence, strength and knock-out style, I have recently lost sight of my deeply buried feminism. I, like the young author, have been chasing the golden penis — in total vain. In the words of my wise daughter, an above average male is like a “C” woman! While I’m not a man hater (yet!), it is so important that we ‘obsolete’ wrinklees remember our worth, value our intensity and know who we are.

Love, does indeed, come in many forms. One step in front of the other . . . . .

Love your story! I recently posted this on my Facebook page:
“Rabbi Nachman, the grandson of the Baal Shem Tov who founded mystical Judaism, said that if you wanted to find the Shekhina, the Divine Feminine, then you should go to the place where the women tell stories. Women’s spirituality, after all, is less about the hereafter than the here and now. A Woman’s Journey to God, Joan Borysenko”
For me your story is all about the divine feminine, and how our socialization in patriarchy has caused us to lose sight of the value of our women friends. Thank you for sharing!

Emily, I read your story twice, and cried both times. I moved to NY 2 years ago, last year lost my (our) baby Gabriel after less than 48 hours, and despite being loved and cherished by my husband, the hardest thing for me holding my grief whilst living in a city where my nearest girlfriend is 4 hours away and every other one is scattered in both distance and time. I wish I could lessen yours and Ronan’s pain. Thank you for your wonderful ode to girlfriends – the most incredible resource this universe has to offer.

I cried when I read, ” it is not an exaggeration to say that I would not have survived – that I will not survive- without my women friends.
This is so true of my life and I am so grateful of all my girlfriends, young and old. Thank you for such a beautiful story!

Maybe we also should look at the fact that these awesome women were different from others in some ways that made them “susceptible” to these wonderful relationships. Not everyone (unfortunately, imho) is cut out for (or realizes they could be) for this life of giving, of being involved in a greater good like these women were. It’s a predisposition already for the possibility of awesome giving and bonding: They chose to work for an international relief organization.

What a gorgeous piece. You are a splendid writer. I hate it that you, your family, and darling little Ronan have to face that terrible disease. I am awed by your transcendent strength. Sending you so much love.

I was so moved when you quoted:
The ache of missing was intense: “Even when they were not able to meet, the survivors continued to feel bound to each other in ways that did not weaken with time. There remained a familiarity between them, a sense of openness and ease that they shared with no one else.”

A group of us trafficking/prostitution survivors have gotten together to form an international online network. Our shared experiences create the type of bonds described above.

I wish Icould say that I have this kind of friendship. I had a friend like this for forty years, but when I remarried a man I love and respect, my friend disagreed with his political stance and she “defriended” me. I miss her so much and sent her a copy of your article. She said she didn’t understand my point. I always thought she’d be at my funeral, surrounded by my other friends, drinking wine and hashing out my foibles. I feel like I’ve already been to the funeral–the death of our friendship.

I can scarcely write for the tears in my eyes. One of my dearest life long girlfriends sent this to me and I just now got a chance to read it. To say that what you wrote is beautiful, is an understatement. Your words are nourishment. They are truth amidst a world wrought with disingenuousness and just plain bullshit. Thank you, truly and deeply, for sharing your experience. Thank you for being such an amazing mother and friend. And, finally, thank you for inspiring me to be a better woman.

hi;there
I am mala.The story is a real one, that I know from the depth of my heart.Because I also know 3 ladies,who were my professor,spend there life for a good social cause.one of them is a alzheimer patient now.But the other two are taking such a nice care.They never left here alone for single moment.

This is one helluva piece… it actually came to me by ‘mistake’, and I am so glad and grateful to my friend for having shared this story with me. Also so grateful for all my girlfriends (all equally caring) who I am proceeding to send this to.. . Thank you so much for writing this.

You have beautifully articulated what I have struggled to say for so long – our female friends matter. We need to take time for them, and not put them at the bottom of the list. Because like you, I know that life is richer for it.

Thank you for your words – I sometimes find myself trying to explain to my husband how deep my relationship with my best friend goes. I would do anything and everything for her. I no longer wish for him to understand though, because it might break his heart. Peace to Ronan and to you.

Wow,I am so happy I took the time out from my busy-ness to read this incredible article. Inspiring is woefully deficient!!! The power of love and friendship combined is unmatchable!!! Great Job sharing THANK YOU!!!

I love this. I am 25 years old and have been tasked with caregiving for my dying mother. My friends and my parents friends who have supported me and my family have been the only thing keeping me going. So much to be thankful for with a strong support system around you.

Your writing astounds me. You speak the absolute truth and I am very grateful for getting to read this tonight. You are absolutely right when you state that we have been taught to believe that certain relationships are constant and primary, when, in reality sometimes they aren’t. True friendships are sincerely a gift and I thank you for the profound truth and knowledge you shared. My thoughts are with you for Ronan almost a year later after you have wrote this. I hope your friends have lifted you up through this terribly difficult and dark time and that hopefully, one day, you will find peace in your heart and strength to move on.

This beautiful article had me sobbing uncontrollably for a good while before I’d even made it out of bed this morning, but when I did, I felt so alive, so thankful, so incredibly hopeful.

I am that 22 year old you were all those years ago, albeit perhaps a little more lost and unsure (I have mild depression which I have been working through for sometime now). Today though, your writing has helped shift my whole world into perspective for me and I cannot thank you enough for sharing your story and your gifted way of writing. Thank you. This article means the world to me today.

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